GOP should hope Harry heaves filibuster

Eventually repealing Obamacare and other liberal Democrat laws that prevent pursuits of liberty-fueled happiness and an economic recovery worthy of the name is made possible if only 51 Republican votes are required in the U.S. Senate.

This tea partier conservative loves the United States of America more than the Seventeenth Amendment-emasculated shell of the upper House of Congress the Framers envisioned, and which campaign-finance reform has transformed into an erstwhile modern-day House of Lords for presidential wannabes.

That’s right, my name is not John McCain and I refuse to refer to as “honorable” those that qualify for exclusive Senate membership by holding their hands out 24/7 365 while begging for campaign money.

[Harry] Reid, D-Nev., planned to continue his push to let nominees win approval with a simple majority of senators’ backing instead of the 60-vote threshold that has stalled many nominations. All 100 senators have been invited to a closed-to-the-public meeting Monday evening to seek a compromise on how to approach those nominated to serve in senior positions in Obama’s administration.

The Constitution sets up a system of checks and balances to prevent pell-mell rushes off ideological, current event-driven cliffs that included a popularly-elected peoples’ house and an upper house embodying the power of states as states. Ending the power of State legislatures to populate the Senate via Constitutional Amendment in 1913 and the vast expansion of federal government power under the commerce clause long ago emasculated much of the intent of the Founders in creating a bicameral national legislature.

Yes, the Constitution itself requires that a super-majority of Senators ratify treaties; but in every other instance requiring that more than a mere majority (impeachment, removal, expulsion, constitutional amendments) approve an act of government, it applies to both houses of Congress. The Framers did not consider the upper house of Congress to have a special duty as a “saucer to cool coffee” (Sen. Chuck Schumer’s favorite phrase) aka bills before they become laws.

The framers considered the separation of powers into thirds between a unitary executive and two houses of Congress to be the saucer; but institutional integrity long ago succumbed to government divided by party as the “cooling off” device. The problem for conservatives is that only liberal Democrats ever get sufficient majorities to control all three; with the filibuster rule effectively making their radical changes permanent. An end to the filibuster writ large would make substantive conservative change possible should the American people see fit to put Republicans in control of the House, Senate and Executive Branch.

This conservative always blanches when liberals claim we had “control” of all branches of the government for five of the eight George W. Bush years and so therefore are responsible for all of America’s problems that poor Barack Obama and the Democrats inherited. Republicans have never “controlled” a U.S. Senate that requires 60 votes they could never get to praise baseball, apple pie or Chevrolet thanks to Democrats there that have never numbered less than 40% since the eight years of the U.S. Grant years. Every thing that have ever enacted that makes Atlas Shrug remains on the books and in our pockets.

Can anyone name a moderate supreme court justice a Democrat was forced to appoint thanks to threatened Republican filibusters? No. Can anyone name any major reversal of big government liberal policy since the New Deal, even when the GOP had the White House, 235 votes in the House and 50 in the Senate? No. But the list of legislative reversals on our suicidal energy and other onerous domestic and economic policies that 40 Democrat senators filibustered are legion.

The filibuster ranks up there with the in-the-tank media, liberal academia, and Hollywood as liberal Democrats’ best friend.

This conservative Republican hopes that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid not only exercises the so-called “nuclear option” with respect to executive branch appointees (temporary politicos where surely the executive branch deserves its widest latitude) but also extends it to all legislation and the appointment of judges. If Dirty Harry made such a break with Senate tradition he would have done conservatives their biggest favor since Jimmy Carter asked Americans to trust him and Florida Democrats thought Al Gore was Pat Buchanan wearing a butterfly ballot.

Mike DeVine is a former op-ed columnist at the Charlotte Observer and legal editor of The (Decatur) Champion (legal organ of DeKalb County, Georgia). He is currently with the Ruf Law Firm in Atlanta Metro and conservative voice of the Atlanta Times News.

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